


Is The Sadness Everlasting? / Love, I Think It Is

by pickapersonality



Category: All Time Low (Band)
Genre: Angst, Drabble, M/M, Sadness, but alex is sad, grey mornings, sighs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-18
Updated: 2018-06-18
Packaged: 2019-05-25 03:10:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14967857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pickapersonality/pseuds/pickapersonality
Summary: There's nothing for him out there; he can tell, this morning. Like he could tell so many mornings before, but it's always a little more poignant every time, that the world is a crushing mess that will only chew him up and spit him out if he tries to change it in any way. Yet, the thought of being nothing always hurt a little more.-Alex can't tell the world outside apart from the rain beating down on the bedroom windows. It all seems very hopeless and grey.





	Is The Sadness Everlasting? / Love, I Think It Is

**Author's Note:**

> I hesitate to post this, because as I was writing, I realised just how much of what I was writing was me. I'm the sad person I've written, my feelings and thoughts playing out in the mind of this variation of fictional Alex Gaskarth. But if my sadness can help me to write, maybe it's good for something. 
> 
> Title taken from Taxi by The Maine.

It's early morning when he wakes, with the rain pounding down on the windows in sheets of grey, rivulets streaming down the panes at desperate speed. The world outside is pressing in like great grey fists of concrete reaching out to beat against the glass, angry and demanding and confident. 

Alex takes a deep, shuddering breath as he surfaces from the sea of bedsheets entangled around him. His eyes drift automatically to the sliver of glass he can see where he didn't quite pull the curtain far enough over last night, where he can see the looming grey, and he wants to dive back into the suffocating arms of the bedsheets. 

There's nothing for him out there; he can tell, this morning. Like he could tell so many mornings before, but it's always a little more poignant every time, that the world is a crushing mess that will only chew him up and spit him out if he tries to change it in any way. Yet, the thought of being nothing always hurt a little more. 

He's not nothing anymore, the tweets and magazine and album sales tell him, in bitter whispers. He's a something, has made many somethings. This should help, really, but it makes him want to go back, back to ten years ago, and tell the young, stupid boy lying in bed - alone, then - that it doesn't get any better when he becomes something. It's like the little slice of infinite hope he allowed himself, a look behind the curtain, has been all coloured in and searched through. It's just an empty space, hollow empty. The room of his somethings isn't the place of hope he'd assured himself it would be, it just points straight back the other way. 

And so, he looks the other way, to the scraping steel jaws of an unchangeable world. 

His lungs hurt, like some sickly sugar burns there, all bittersweet and gritty. He breathes, counts to five, and tries to escape out of his head. 

The room almost seems to flicker before him, like the light is pooling into the corners as the space paints itself into animation, from the greyed canvas he'd half-seen before. There's the wardrobe, next to the half-closed door, with a strip of blue jumper poking from the tiny gap between the oak panels, copper hinges squeaky and worn from constant movement. The curtains are white, light, and brush the stripped wooden floor. 

Alex rests his head back on the pillow and sighs. Normality helps the helplessness turn to numbness. Not good, but better. 

The sheets to his right rustle, shifting, and Jack turns to face him with a bleary smile. He reaches a hand up to brush his fingers through the dyed blue stripe, his eyes all swirling and full of a warmth that Alex has learnt to link to something akin to adoration. 

"Morning," Jack yawns, reaching out to throw an arm over Alex's chest. "You okay?" 

"I'm fine." 

Jack's eyes flicker open, blinking, to scour his in thoughtful, laser-like concern. He sighs, but it's not like Alex's huge, hopeless sighs. It's a sad sigh, a little heartbroken and a little uncertain. His voice softens to featherlike. "'Lex, you don't need to lie to me. Please just talk to me." 

Alex flicks a strand of candyfloss hair out of one hazel eye. It falls straight back into its adopted place, and he can't bring himself to move it again. "I know." 

"Babe," Jack's voice has become pleading, and oh god no, Alex's chest feels like it's about to crumble in on itself. Jack's blaming himself, and it's not his fault, but he can never see that. Jack can't help chemicals. "Please. Please, just talk to me or let me hold you, or- or, I- we can-" 

In an impossibly difficult move, Alex shoves himself over to nestle into Jack's side, resting his forehead against the guitarist's collarbone. Jack tucks himself around his boyfriend, chin on head and arms encasing him. Alex tries not to breath too hard against Jack's chest from the sudden exertion. 

"Let's just stay here. Can we?" Alex wishes his voice wasn't so pathetically small. He wishes so many things. 

Jack huffs a little hum of relief. "Yes. Yes, we can. Of course we can." 

They lie in silence, Alex held in the arms of the one person he can let see this part of him; the part that has been crumbling and tumbling for years: behind the curtains of the tour bus bunks; backstage where he can find an empty, dark corner. He wants Jack to see this, so that the sharp feeling of aloneness can go away, but he wishes that Jack could forget afterwards. He doesn't want to be a broken person, but he wants to break in the arms of someone else, rather than so bitterly by himself. 

He lies, and listens to the beating of the rain on the window. Jack is warm; Alex can feel the stead thrum of his heart beat between his ribs. It's not good, but it's always better.


End file.
